How much of your Junior High history do you recall? Do you remember the Hindenburg disaster? How about where it happened or how many died? Do you remember ever seeing the film of the disaster?
The Hindenburg zeppelin crash 70 years ago today led to the widespread abandoning of lighter-than-air ships as a method of transportation, even though helium, a non-flamable gas was and is used to fill the few modern blimps that exist today. It was a watershed event that shaped the future of aviation. It was that significant, yet few today remember the Hindenburg or what its demise meant.
The fact that so few remember it today tells me that this and other events both major and minor are discarded in the memory of the American people. It's not all that important to remember who we are or what we were or what we've become, is it?
Parents, especially homeschooling parents, need to help their children understand why history is so important, why the path behind us helps us interpret today and forecast tomorrow. Few today know Iran used to be called Persia, much less why Iran is now a Islamic theocracy. I doubt even if the majority of the people in America know why we need to pay attention to Iran and what they are doing with their uranium. They are likely clueless about the teaching of Dar el-Islam that says any territory once conquered by Islam belongs to Islam in perpetuity, or what that implies for the rest of the world. I would welcome being proved wrong.
Sir Francis Bacon said, "Knowledge and human power are synonymous, since the ignorance of the cause frustrates the effect."1 It's critical to the future of humanity that the knowledge of the past does not falter in the human mind. Past generations of the great American experiment understood this. An educated populace is despised by tyrants and power seekers. It makes them more difficult to control. This is why some people don't like homeschooling. It removes the possibility of one entity to control the flow of knowledge and the perspective on history. I am concerned that as homeschooling grows more popular, such people may possibly ramp up their efforts to neutralize such movements. I would welcome being proved wrong on this as well.
Thankfully, homeschoolers are fiercely independent. Efforts by homeschooling pioneers and activists like Treon Goossen to keep homeschoolers informed are paying off, although with the current legislative bodies for the state and nation are very resistant to certain ideas and very open to certain organizations like the NEA. Homeschooling parents are compelled by such bodies to remain part activist, part teacher, not unlike their publicly-funded contemporaries. It's unfortunate, but it is the price of freedom to homeschool without the state dictating what they can and can't do.
It's easy at the end of the school year for homeschooling parents to forget that they wield enormous power in their children's lives. They just want to get to summer and take some time off. We must remember how important our jobs are and what we are accomplishing every day. Our students will impact the world in small and large ways. It may take years to see this, but even now, results are encouraging.
The Hindenburg zeppelin crash 70 years ago today led to the widespread abandoning of lighter-than-air ships as a method of transportation, even though helium, a non-flamable gas was and is used to fill the few modern blimps that exist today. It was a watershed event that shaped the future of aviation. It was that significant, yet few today remember the Hindenburg or what its demise meant.The fact that so few remember it today tells me that this and other events both major and minor are discarded in the memory of the American people. It's not all that important to remember who we are or what we were or what we've become, is it?
Parents, especially homeschooling parents, need to help their children understand why history is so important, why the path behind us helps us interpret today and forecast tomorrow. Few today know Iran used to be called Persia, much less why Iran is now a Islamic theocracy. I doubt even if the majority of the people in America know why we need to pay attention to Iran and what they are doing with their uranium. They are likely clueless about the teaching of Dar el-Islam that says any territory once conquered by Islam belongs to Islam in perpetuity, or what that implies for the rest of the world. I would welcome being proved wrong.
Sir Francis Bacon said, "Knowledge and human power are synonymous, since the ignorance of the cause frustrates the effect."1 It's critical to the future of humanity that the knowledge of the past does not falter in the human mind. Past generations of the great American experiment understood this. An educated populace is despised by tyrants and power seekers. It makes them more difficult to control. This is why some people don't like homeschooling. It removes the possibility of one entity to control the flow of knowledge and the perspective on history. I am concerned that as homeschooling grows more popular, such people may possibly ramp up their efforts to neutralize such movements. I would welcome being proved wrong on this as well.
Thankfully, homeschoolers are fiercely independent. Efforts by homeschooling pioneers and activists like Treon Goossen to keep homeschoolers informed are paying off, although with the current legislative bodies for the state and nation are very resistant to certain ideas and very open to certain organizations like the NEA. Homeschooling parents are compelled by such bodies to remain part activist, part teacher, not unlike their publicly-funded contemporaries. It's unfortunate, but it is the price of freedom to homeschool without the state dictating what they can and can't do.
It's easy at the end of the school year for homeschooling parents to forget that they wield enormous power in their children's lives. They just want to get to summer and take some time off. We must remember how important our jobs are and what we are accomplishing every day. Our students will impact the world in small and large ways. It may take years to see this, but even now, results are encouraging.
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